Julia never looked up until the back door opened. Tara, holding the handle, caught her eye. She looked guilty, and Julia noticed her son in tow.
“I have to get him home. I’ll call you, okay?”
Evelyn shot her a look. Tara shrugged, but her hangdog expression softened when Julia managed a strained smile. Tara shuttled her child through the foyer and out the front door without looking back. That’s when Julia turned her head, slowly, taking in her not-so-suddenly empty house. They had all gone. Everyone but Evelyn and her mother.
Truthfully, nothing about that fazed Julia in those first moments. It wasn’t until the back door opened once again and Thomas stood in the threshold, his knees grass-stained and his hair matted down with sweat that Julia’s heart truly broke. She looked into the still innocent face of her younger son, and it felt like her chest went empty, like this truth had become a dark talon that ripped clean her soul.
“Everybody’s leaving,” he said.
Julia broke down. She shuddered. Before she could hide her face, she saw Thomas’s eyes widen. She knew that her reaction, that moment of weakness, took some of his innocence away. But it no longer mattered. For life was about to take its due, and the Swann family suddenly owed more than they could possibly pay.
4
As I stared at the floor of the moving bus, I swore I felt every eye boring into me. I imagined the other passengers on the bus slowly realizing who I was. Ironic, considering I still felt unable to answer that question myself. Sweat dampened my hair and dripped off the tip of my nose, the droplet flattening when it hit the rubber matting at my feet.
I’m a killer.
I was afraid to even lift my head. I couldn’t let anyone see me. So I sat, sweating and almost hyperventilating, trying to come up with a way off the bus. I heard voices rising further toward the front of the cabin. I tried to ignore them, yet they grew louder and louder.
“Why don’t you just go back to where you came from?”
That was a man’s voice. Even from a distance, it was almost as if I could taste the hatred that dripped from every word. No one responded at first. Then a woman spoke. Her tone was soft and nonconfrontational.
“Just leave her alone.”
“What, are you some kind of Muslim lover?” the man shouted. “Are all you a bunch of MOOO-slim lovers?”
I looked up and saw who was speaking. He was a middle-aged man wearing an Under Armour shirt beneath a fleece vest even though it was almost ninety degrees outside. He had a tight goatee and black hair. His eyes were narrow but sharp. In all, he looked like a recreational soccer coach.
Across from him and up three seats sat a woman wearing a head scarf. Her complexion was dark and her back straight. She sat with her hands on her lap, staring forward. Her body language seemed, at least to me, to say that she’d experienced something like this before.
As I watched, forgetting everything for a second, lost in the unfolding drama, the guy with the phone stood up.
“Hey, idiot,” he called out to the guy with the goatee. “It was an American.”
The man near the front ignored him. He stood up and stepped into the aisle, moving so close to the woman in the head scarf that his head tilted downward to look at her.
“Go home,” he said. “No one wants you here.”
She did not flinch. I stared, utterly lost in the confrontation. Maybe it was the injury, but everything that had happened slipped away, and I was left sitting on that bus, watching a man tower over a woman. And I couldn’t understand.
Killer, I thought. Am I a killer?
Who was I? I heard the man in the vest. I heard his hatred. I felt the fear. It radiated out like heat from some angry star. Did it come from the woman, sitting so stoically in her seat as the man spit vitriol over her? Shouldn’t she be afraid?
But it wasn’t right. That’s not where it came from. Instead, I suddenly realized it came from me. I was afraid. Although I couldn’t really understand it, I was afraid of that woman. She was the source. And in a way, I understood that was what the man in the vest felt, too.
My head throbbed. It made no sense. Nothing did. The man was so full of aggression. He towered over her, threatening her with every word, every movement he made. She should be afraid. Maybe she was. But why would he fear her? Why would I?
I sat frozen as the man with the phone beside me moved closer to the guy in the vest. He moved to protect the woman with her head covered. Yet I felt an overwhelming urge to strike him down.
At that exact moment, the phone in my hand received a text. I looked at it, read it.
Hey, call me. I’m worried
I stared at the screen. At the name above the message: Julia.
The notifications rang in a staccato series, one after another, as more texts pinged the phone.
Michael where R U
Call me please
Answer
I read the rest, but they floated away on the emptiness of my lost memories. It didn’t seem to matter, either. For my eyes returned to that name. I stared at it as it repeated within me over and over again.
Julia, Julia, Julia . . .
It vibrated against my skull. Something changed. I changed. I thought of her. What she would want me to do. I couldn’t even picture her face, but somehow I knew what she would expect of me. I knew.
Julia, I thought. And I stood. It’s strange. A moment before, all I could think to do was run. I knew they were looking for me. And the last thing I should have wanted to do was draw attention. But I walked up the aisle, eyes locked on the man with the vest.
The man with the phone didn’t notice me until I shouldered him back into a seat. The other guy, however, did. He turned slowly, his attention focusing on me. I didn’t say a word. My mind was empty but for a single impulse.
“What the fuck do you want?” the man said. “You got a problem?”
Never worry about the guy who talks. Maybe I knew that lesson before my mind went blank. I’ve definitely learned it over and over again since. But it is an undeniable truth. If a guy is running his mouth, he’s not going to start anything. If, however, a guy is silent, then it means trouble. I was that guy on the bus. I took three more steps and my fist shot out. I caught him just below his larynx.
I hit him hard, but fights aren’t like the ones on television or in movies. It’s not easy to knock someone out with one punch, especially someone who’s aware he’s going to be hit. The man did take a step back. He coughed, sputtering to take a breath. So I dipped my shoulder and ran into him. My foot caught on a seat and I lost my balance. We fell to the aisle, together.
The man struggled under me. I could hear him wheezing. At the same time, my head spun. All thoughts turned blank, then. Like nothing existed inside my head. Like a dull white light. But strangely, I have one memory that is so clear. As the man pushed against me, I turned my head, looking for a handhold to regain my feet. That’s when I saw the woman. She was right next to me. She sat exactly as she had before, hands on her lap, eyes straight forward. Her face was a mask of ice. Sharp and cold. There was no reaction. No relief. No shock. Nothing but a wall of some emotion that I may never understand.
The aggression left me as I looked at her. A hand grabbed my arm. I rose, with someone’s help. That’s when I realized the bus had stopped. I half expected the driver to be the one holding my arm, but it was the guy with the phone. The driver, an aging man with unwashed hair and a tattoo of what looked like a turtle on his forearm, sat in his seat, talking on his radio to dispatch.
Someone else helped the goatee man up. They sat him on a seat as he continued to gasp for breath. I wondered, for just an instant, if I had really hurt him.
“Dude,” the guy with the phone said.
I looked at him, then, and remembered the report on his phone. He stared at me. He knew. I was sure of it. With a snap, I freed my arm and walk
ed down the aisle toward my seat. I grabbed the case and turned. Before I took two steps back up the aisle, though, I heard the phone notification. This time, though, it was a different tone from the texts. Spinning, I lunged backwards and found it sitting on the seat. When I looked at the screen, it said I had missed another call from Julia.
Inside, I raged. Jamming the phone into my front pocket, I moved through the bus, shouldering people as I passed. Others took one look and moved out of my way. When I reached the driver, I did not even look at him.
“Open the door,” I said.
The driver did. He said nothing as I walked off the bus. He had pulled up close to the guardrail, so I had to sidle along it. The metal felt cool as I vaulted it and took my first step down the embankment.
That’s when I took a breath and smelled Christmas, of all things. I pictured children unwrapping presents. And, strangely, a vague emptiness, full of unmet expectations and deep disappointment. I felt an overwhelming sadness. Yet I didn’t know why.
In reality, that smell came from the towering pines that lined the highway. It was the first association my mind had been able to make since coming to. I should have been excited, but I wasn’t. Instead, in a way, I wished it hadn’t happened at all. I wished I could just disappear into the forest, forever.
5
I’ll come back later tonight. Are you sure you don’t want me to take the kids?”
Evelyn held the front door open as she spoke. Julia, who had regained composure, answered in a toneless voice.
“It’s okay. I think . . . I need to talk to them.”
“Are you sure?”
Julia wasn’t. Not at all. Yet she knew that everyone in the country suddenly thought her husband, their father, was a vile murderer. She could no more hide that from them than wish it out of existence.
“Mom?”
She turned. Evan stood at the back door, the late sun elongating his shadowed body, making him appear taller than he was. For a second, Julia saw Michael instead. Their older son was growing to look more and more like his father, with darker hair and a long face. His voice, though still higher, shared a tone with his dad as well. She swallowed down the emotions that vision brought up inside her.
Evan wouldn’t say anything else. He hadn’t spoken much since he woke up. She could see his accusation clearly on his young face. Liar, it seemed to scream at Julia. As she watched him, he pointed at the front window.
“What?” Julia asked.
He didn’t answer, so Julia walked slowly to the window, glancing back at her son once. Then she parted the curtain just as a white van with the colorful logo of the local network affiliate slowed to a stop at the base of her winding drive. She ducked, looking under the low-hanging branches of the two sugar maples in her front yard. She saw the other cars and vans making a jagged line down the street.
“Oh, God,” Evelyn said behind her.
Thomas appeared. He moved closer to her, touching her. Nothing was said, but his childish intuition picked up on the tension. Julia turned to see if Evan sensed it, too, but he was gone. His footsteps echoed down the stairs to the basement. Julia pressed Thomas close to her.
“Go out the back,” Julia said to Evelyn.
Evelyn turned. Julia let the curtain fall closed as her friend gathered her son and headed into the backyard. A white fence ran the perimeter. Evelyn moved to the gate at the side yard but stopped.
“They have cameras out,” she said, stepping back behind the house.
Evelyn looked around, moving like a trapped animal. Grabbing her son’s hand, she pulled him across the yard to the back corner. Without a word, she picked him up and placed him on the other side of the fence. His foot caught on the way down, and he fell to the ground. Although it didn’t seem like the impact could have hurt him seriously, he shouted in pain.
Evelyn’s stress became a spreading thundercloud. As her son wailed, Evelyn followed him. The leg of her shorts looped one of the posts. As she went over, it tore and a deep red mark sprang up on the back of her thigh. She didn’t make a sound, though. Instead, she pulled her crying boy off the ground and hurried across the neighbor’s yard, her strides long and stiff.
Julia stood on the porch, watching the entire thing. So did Thomas. They might have stood there forever, caught up in the web of that unnerving display, but one even worse occurred next. A head appeared, craning around the side of the house. It was a man with scruffy facial hair and hipster glasses. He swung one arm over the fence. A television camera hung from his hand.
Thomas froze. He stared at the stranger, every muscle in his body rigid and still. Julia, on the other hand, moved quickly. She thrust herself between the cameraman and her son, blocking him from view. The motion seemed to turn her son’s once rigid body to liquid. His legs wobbled, and he looked like he might lift off in the breeze and sail away.
Julia saw this. She felt it. Her arms wrapped around him. She picked him up as she once had, as she stopped doing when he turned seven. In a way, it mirrored what Evelyn had done moments before. Yet she had seemed to act out of a panicked fear, whereas Julia’s stance hinted more at a lioness protecting her young.
Thomas’s arms clung to Julia’s neck. He buried his head in her shoulder. Barely noticing his weight, she spun and walked back into the house. Using her foot, she swung the door closed. It slammed so hard that the glasses in the kitchen cupboard rattled.
Immediately, she felt eyes on her back. Slowly, she put Thomas on the ground and turned. Evan stood in the family room, his face as pale as the whites of his eyes. Julia’s chest tightened.
“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered.
His mouth opened, but it took time for the words to come out. When they did, they sounded as thin as the air between them.
“What happened to the TV?”
6
Julia left the kids in the basement. Evan had gone back to giving her the silent treatment, and Thomas calmed when she turned on the Xbox. As she walked up the stairs, she heard the faint sounds of their video game coming through the partially opened pocket door that led to the media room. Her eyes closed as she focused on lifting her feet, one step at a time. They felt as heavy as if they had been cast in iron.
Her mother waited at the top of the steps, her reading glasses hanging from a silver chain around her neck, one she had not stopped tugging at since the report had come on the TV. The expression on her mother’s face was undecipherable. It seemed at once protective and accusatory. But Julia failed to notice. Instead, she pushed past her and paced. She went from the kitchen through the dining room. Then from the foyer through the living room and back through the kitchen. She did this three times before her mother finally spoke.
“Did you tell them?”
She shook her head. “No. How could I? Evan won’t speak to me.”
“I thought . . .”
“No,” Julia repeated.
She paced another lap. The physical effort was in vain, though. It cleared none of the cacophony of thoughts that rolled through her brain like some overplayed and torturous pop song. She needed to act. She could not sit still. But she was trapped like an animal in the zoo, needing to hunt but instead walking in circles just waiting to be fed.
“The TV’s broken,” her mother said. Julia felt like she wasn’t even talking to her, that her mom was just putting words out there into the ether. “I tried to put it on, but it’s fried for sure.”
Julia kept pacing until she reached the living room again. There, she parted the curtains. People were everywhere, so she quickly closed them again. Without saying anything, she turned and walked up the stairs. As if she somehow knew what Julia was thinking, her mother followed her into the master bedroom. Julia sat on the edge of their king-size mattress and, without asking, her mother put on the television.
The image on the screen was surreal. On the station that the television
had last been set to, a live shot of the front of her house appeared. Julia sat on her bed and looked at the outside of her own bedroom window. The shade was partially open. Although it was most likely a trick of her mind, she swore she saw herself there, watching herself watch herself like she and her mother stood between fun-house mirrors.
“Change it,” she snapped.
Her mother did. They found another station. It, too, was covering her husband.
“As we wait for confirmation of recent reports that Michael Swann is the lone suspect in the attack on Penn Station, new sources have come forward with some chilling news. According to those who knew Swann, he spoke often about the polarizing elections. In fact, someone claiming to be a family friend told a reporter for one of our affiliated stations that Swann often made racially insensitive remarks . . .”
Julia’s cheeks burned. “That’s bullshit!”
Her mother switched the channel again. For her part, Julia was reeling. Knew Swann? Family friend? She wasn’t even sure an hour had passed since this new madness started. How could they be reporting things like that? It made no sense.
The next station provided factual accounts of the attack. Thousands injured. Hundreds dead. News that engineers had concluded that Madison Square Garden could not be saved. Due to structural-integrity issues, the iconic building would have to be utterly demolished. Cell service was returning in the tristate area.
Julia heard that. She grabbed her phone and tried to call Michael on the work phone again, the one that she thought he had picked up. It rang four times and went to voicemail. She listened to his voice, so calm and professional. It made her cry. Through the tears, she left a message.
The Real Michael Swann Page 17
